The streets around the BAE Systems shipyard in Glasgow's Scotstoun, one of only two remaining on the Clyde, form a grid of tenement flats, bounded by back greens filled with neatly pegged washing and children's toys.

The industry's once mighty labour force has dwindled to around 3,200, divided between here and nearby Govan, and including some workers seconded east to Rosyth.

The loss of community is still keenly felt. "When I was a child in the 60s you could time everything by the hooters from the yards," recalls local historian Sandra Malcolm. "Now you don't even hear a dredger. What will happen to BAE worries a lot of people."

Since the destruction of most of Glasgow's heavy industry, Scotstoun has become a byword for poverty. Of 4,000 residents, 59% were identified in the most recent Scottish index of multiple deprivation as being in the most deprived 10% of the population.

The district is divided, Malcolm says, between the struggling south around the yard and the richer north, closer to Victoria Park. "Now it's difficult to buy a house in the avenues north of Dumbarton Road, and there's a very good primary school, so people are moving back."

Last November, BAE Systems announced significant job cuts in its yards across the UK, and the potential for further losses in the event of a yes vote in September's independence referendum is something the pro-union campaign has emphasised.

These days, workers are no longer recruited from the local catchment area. But for those living in the shadow of the yard, the threat is more psychological than practical.

"I feel my own job is under threat if it's a yes vote," says Liz Love, who works in a bakery. "Higher taxes would mean lower wages or job losses, and small businesses will be under threat. How's a place like this supposed to survive?"

Everyone at the shipyards knows what the no campaign is saying about the threat to shipbuilding, says her colleague Alec Barrie. "The way to look at it is that we know what we've got and we don't know what's going to happen with independence".

Recent polls have indicated a decisive majority in favour of remaining in the union, despite other surveys earlier in the summer suggesting that the race was tightening, and in Scotstoun, the mood is palpably no to independence, with local people raising concerns about currency, taxes and jobs.

"This used to be a thriving area," says Barrie, "with a crown post office, a butchers and banks, but now it's all mobile phone shops and takeaways. There used to be queues out the door."

It is not simply that people's shopping habits have changed, but that many more cannot shop at all. "A lot of people have lost their jobs so they don't have the money to spend. You hear about more and more people going to food banks."

"It's getting drummed into the young ones to get an education," says Love. "But my nephew went to the University of Dundee and now he's working in Poundland."